The Night We Stopped Pretending Desire

It all began with a mistake. On an ordinary day, in the narrow corridor between the kitchen and the balcony, Tomás came a little too close while letting someone pass and his chest brushed against Lucía’s back. It was only an instant, just long enough for her to feel the heat of his body through the fabric. That heat she had been imagining for weeks without daring to name.

He stepped back abruptly, as if he had been burned.

“Sorry,” he murmured, not quite looking at her.

Lucía blushed and lowered her gaze to her glass. She said nothing. There was no need. They both knew that brush had been anything but accidental, though neither of them would ever admit it.

They kept stealing sidelong glances at each other for the rest of the night, separated by the careful distance of people who barely know one another. Every time their eyes met, one of them would turn away, pretending to take interest in something else. If I don’t look at him, it isn’t happening, she told herself. But it was happening, and they both knew it.

They drifted farther apart as the evening went on, always seeking the opposite end of the room, like two magnets repelling each other because they feared what would happen if they let themselves be drawn together. In truth, they wanted the opposite. They wanted to feel each other. And in silence they regretted still pretending at an indifference that fooled no one.

***

That same night Lucía dreamed of him. It wasn’t a clear dream, but a sensation: large hands tracing her back, a mouth near her neck, the weight of a body over hers. She woke with her heart racing and her skin too sensitive, and she knew, from the way Tomás avoided her the next morning, that he had dreamed something similar.

They said nothing all day. But the tension had settled between them like a third presence, thick and electric, impossible to ignore.

The chance came when the others left and they were alone. The door closed behind the last guest and suddenly the apartment’s silence became so dense it was hard to breathe. Lucía collected glasses that didn’t need collecting. Tomás put away chairs that could have stayed where they were. Anything to avoid standing still, to avoid looking at each other, to avoid having to decide.

“It’s cold,” she said at last, wrapping her arms around herself.

It wasn’t cold. It was an excuse, and they both knew it.

“Yeah,” he replied, his voice rougher than he meant it to be. “Pretty cold.”

The night had barely begun and yet, somehow, they both sensed it would not last long enough.

***

They never really knew how it happened, or which of them made the first move. Perhaps both did at the same time, unable to bear another second of that distance. Perhaps it was him, who on impulse crossed the living room and pulled her into a tight embrace, burying his face in her hair. Or perhaps it was her, who turned before he reached her and met him with a kiss that was too quick, too hungry, a kiss she had been saving for months.

Whoever it was, it no longer mattered. Lucía’s mouth found Tomás’s and everything else ceased to exist. It was not a gentle kiss. It was the kind of kiss you give when you have waited too long, teeth brushing lips and breath mingling in gasps.

They kept going. They might not have been able to stop even if they had wanted to.

His scent was warm, of clean skin and something else, something that made her knees go weak. Lucía’s hands slid up Tomás’s back, damp, eager, clutching at the fabric of his shirt as if afraid she might fall. She wanted more. She wanted to touch beyond what his clothes allowed.

And so it was. Just for them, without witnesses, without any sound beyond their own sighs. Two mouths and a thousand desires that had remained hidden until that instant, suddenly blooming in the middle of the dim light.

The clothes began to feel unnecessary. They disappeared little by little, garment by garment, amid kisses that moved from neck to shoulder and from shoulder to collarbone. Both of them shivered with every caress, as if their skin had finally recognized what it had longed for all along.

They broke apart for a moment, panting, forehead to forehead, and looked into each other’s eyes. In that look everything fit: surprise, desire, and the absurd certainty of having wasted too much time pretending.

“We shouldn’t,” she whispered, with no conviction at all.

“I know,” he answered, and kissed her again.

***

Tomás pushed her gently against the wall, trapping her between his body and the cold surface. He ran his hands over every inch of her, slowly and yet urgently, from top to bottom, leaving no corner unexplored. Her sides, the curve of her waist, the inside of her thighs. Lucía tilted her head back and closed her eyes, letting herself be touched, letting herself be discovered.

Suddenly she let out a long, deep breath, a sound that broke the apartment’s silence. But she was not the sort to stay still. With a decisive movement she pressed her hands against Tomás’s chest and shoved him backward until he fell onto the bed in the adjoining room.

Flat on his back, unable to move from the shock, Tomás looked up at her. In that position, in control, she seemed even more arousing.

Lucía straightened before him and, without haste, bared her breasts. Maybe they’re not perfect, she thought for a second. But she trusted him, despite barely knowing him, and that trust was enough not to cover herself.

Tomás looked at her carefully, almost devoutly. He had dreamed of this: of touching her, of running his tongue over her skin, of finding out whether reality could live up to everything he had imagined so many nights. It did. It surpassed it.

***

Before she could strip off the last garment, Lucía’s fingers stopped when she felt, beneath his underwear, something firm, hot, demanding attention. She looked up, surprised, and he flushed at being found out.

But he didn’t look away. On the contrary: he sat up a little, took her hand, and guided it until she was resting it over his sex, through the fabric. Lucía felt the hard bulge against her palm and a shiver ran through her from head to toe.

“I’ve wanted you since the first time I saw you,” he confessed, his voice breaking.

She didn’t answer with words. Before she could fully react, Tomás bent down and pulled her underwear down her legs, sliding it carefully until it fell to the floor. His mouth was aching to taste her, from the first touch to the most intimate part.

He laid her gently on the bed and began his descent. His lips moved from her navel to her pelvis, slowly, drawing a trail of wet kisses that made her tremble. When he reached her sex, he found the warm, wet folds waiting for him. He passed his tongue over them, patiently, measuring each of her reactions.

Lucía clutched the sheets. Tomás added his fingers, sinking them in slowly while continuing with his mouth, searching for that spot that made her arch. She let out a moan that broke the silence again, a sound she no longer tried to hold back.

“Don’t stop,” she begged between gasps. “Please, don’t stop.”

He had no intention of doing so.

***

When she could stand it no longer, she pulled him upward. Tomás’s sweaty hands settled on her buttocks and squeezed hard, drawing her toward him until there was no space left between their bodies. They felt skin against skin, heat against heat, and for an instant they stayed still, forehead to forehead, taking in what was about to happen.

They thought that, at last, after so long, they would soothe the desire. They were wrong. The moment they joined, desire did not go out: it intensified, burned in both of them, set fire to them until they were left breathless.

Lucía wrapped her legs around Tomás’s waist and guided him inside her. He entered slowly at first, attentive to every reaction of hers, and then, when he felt her yielding and hungry, he began to move at a pace that drove them both out of their minds.

What they had wanted for months was finally happening, and in that moment neither of them thought about anything except feeling one another, as deeply as possible. The absurd excuses about the cold, the averted looks, the touches pretending to be accidents. All of that fell away behind them, ridiculous and distant.

They moved together, searching, finding, losing each other again. She bit his shoulder to stifle a cry; he whispered her name against her ear as if it were the only thing he remembered how to say. The bed creaked and neither of them tried to hide it. There was no one left to fool.

When they came, they came almost at the same time, gripping each other tightly, trembling, their breathing broken. Their bodies remained joined for a long while afterward, unwilling to part, as if afraid that if they did, the spell would break and they would go back to being two strangers who avoided each other’s gaze.

***

Tomás let himself fall beside her and brushed a strand of hair from her damp forehead. Lucía opened her eyes and found him watching her with a slow smile, the smile of someone who has just discovered something he had long suspected.

“We wasted a lot of time,” she said, still short of breath.

“We’ll make it up,” he replied.

Outside, the night went on, oblivious to everything. Inside, two almost-strangers had finally stopped pretending, and for the first time in months neither of them had the slightest intention of apologizing.